poem: A Star Questions Her Moon

for R, with much appreciation

 

 

For that is happiness: to wander alone
Surrounded by the same moon, whose tides remind us of ourselves,
Our distances, and what we leave behind.
The lamp left on, the curtains letting in the light.
These things were promises. No doubt we will come back to them.

-Hugo Williams

 

 

1. You are a poet trapped in an engineer’s life.

I watch you- the way you respond

to simple questions, with such care,

an enigma of consideration- How are you today,

becomes a journey of discovery into the story

of how your neighbor hurt his leg

before breakfast.

 

You tell me that you fly in dreams,

and I know it to be true, for you are

just fearless enough

to daydream out windows

while voices drone on with their usual

rapaste of excuses for the weary and famished.

 

Forty-seven years of vindication

for why it is necessary to break your back

in Oaxaca to buy a sack of corn;

for why we are condemned

to watch the land itself melt

under this new terrible onslaught.

 

Why your town’s children

may never again have enough to fill

distended bellies on stunted frames.

 

I understand your anger, for anyone

paying attention would be damned furious.

 

But you drop those parcels too in front of doorsills

before entering-

considering it impolite to bring bad energy

into another’s space.

 

2. I did not  truly grasp resilience

until I met you-

the only man I ever knew who worked

to put himself through grade school.

The wearied and oft-repeated story of your pueblo:

children, 3,

abandoned to the bottle,

finding charity on cold cobblestone streets

and sidewalks more often

than in beds. Your sister’s burned away hand

molded you, maybe, into the angry

warrior who takes life by storm.

 

It does not surprise me one bit-

that you found a gun strapped to your back

in the days of greater injustice,

fighting the unwinnable war.

 

I will never ask how many times

you fired.

 

3. And I know now you brought me here-

there was something to that shaman's story

it is your call I heard

across miles and decades;

your star, you said, the one you could hold in real life-

I only ask, how did you know where to find me?

 

4. a man from Texas stopped me mid-stride- asked me

if I love you. I pondered this unbidden query;

rolled it in my mind, tasted it, thought:

 

What a strange question. Ask the tides if they love the moon

that shapes and plies them, tugs on them

both into the curve of their destiny and against their will,

and there you will find my answer.

 

How can one not love the perfect fit

of an empty soul chamber

the width and shape of one's own body-

and yet how can one truly love from within

those walls that keep one ensconced,

but also, keep the owner resolutely

outside of your extended reach?

 

only as much and in the same way as the tides ever loved

their moon.

 

5. I know you will stand fast

and hold my hand when I am scared to death,

overwhelmed with the weight of it all-

as we watch the soils melt like sugar

and progress unravel, like cords trailing

from the kites you lift on holidays,

daydreaming of flight.

 

I wrap you in a hug, and feel the strength

in your frail frame.

You may be the first person

I trust will never abandon me

to this world to walk alone.

 

You understand my own anger,

 let me have my fights;

yet you whisper to me words of pure spun gold

when no-one is looking,

even as we engineer designs and test them

on the hearts and minds of unsuspecting pupils,

charts open and pens graphing

and tables covered in notes.

 

And you will never embrace the whole

of your poet self, and thus, by extension

never see the me in front of you,

seeing you.

 

It is maddening. How do I awaken every morning

not wanting to write poems

of the moon?

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

ah yes, the first line made me smile so much...i am the poet, my dad the engineer...we often didn't and still haven't seen eye to eye...he figured everything out with a slide rule...and by breaking it down into parts...like a scientist vs a priest...i always saw things differently and wrote...he always asked me what i was going to do with poetry?
maybe we are both still wondering...

at any rate...i found myself relating to this write..perhaps in a different way...no matter , engineer or not...two people can compromise and find a way to solve things, and to love.

my girlfriend is in the vein of my father...but we figure it out...

i probably seem weird to her sometimes...but i am not surprised by that.

really like this poem...

jacob

[Marie Anzalone]

Thanks jacob, you have me smiling right now. I hesitated on this one, for many reasons, and am glad now that I tried to put it down. I understand the dilemma you say, for I am both a scinetist and a poet. Condemned to analyze my bizarre life before writing about it, I suppose. Try being the only scientist in the room who believes in reincarnation some time. Or attending a conference of mostly New Agers, trying to explain why their concept of DNA is wrong. Some days I just give up, others I find it soemwhere to make enough peace with my own self that I can actually get out of my own way and get some work done. That is what inner peace is all about, by the way.

You're welcome. :-)

[Ken Simm.]

The star is questioning her moon. That means that she is more essential to him. She understands deeply how he feels and loves him all the more for it. And that love is the most powerful external influence in her life. If she was a planet and not a star, he would pull her tides and influence every physical aspect of her being. But isn't that exactly what he is doing?
Yes, he may wax and wane, (hopefully I'm not taking the analogy so far it becomes unworkable) but he still shines in her night sky and she looks up to him every night.
His life has been shaped. He has been wounded but his experience has moulded the truest man. A man of strength and compassion. Where both primary aspects are blended. But of course he does not see that. A man such as he would not. He would not be the poet he is if it was vaunted and thrown out to the world to say , Look here stands the poet. Instead it is here stands the man judged by her love first and foremost. Not here stands the engineer, or the poet, or even both. But here stands a man proud.

[Marie Anzalone]

A man proud. Yes, that is it, exactly. And, to add, one of the finest I have ever known, in any country, of any age. You caught on to my srtruggle with the title. It almost was, "An Ocean Converses with Her Moon," but I did not know how to handle the tides- moon analogy (around which image this poem was formed) with the fact he calls the narrator his star. Yes, she does love him for it, and for the intractible draw, the focus, etc. She has tried 8 ways to Sunday to call it something else, anything else, but it sneaks back in small ways, sometimes. Which leaves her with that nagging question at the end. People say they want to meet their soul mate, are looking for their soul twin. But they do not know what they are asking for. It never occurs to them that the person might not be available when they appear. Then what? How does one move forward loving another mortal with the moon right in front of her? You nailed it, Ken. Thank you.

[Ken Simm.]

Is worship love? Does she admire what he is and call it love? It seems to me that to be a soul mate, (not a soul twin, I differentiate) it seems to me that as many things as possible need to be equal. I believe I have met my soul mate because what I saw in her was what I aspired to in myself and ,to blow my own trumpet I am proud I gained. It also seems to me that to discover everything bout your mate could negate love. Mystery is still powerful.

[Marie Anzalone]

Is worship love? No, it is not. Admiration maybe more so than love- for as alluded to, there are some pretty strong limitations and nowhere this could go for her. That discussion was had. As you point out so clearly, the right one does make you want to be the best you know how to be. No-one ever said the thing had to be romantic in nature. There is no law that says a soulmate is always a romantic partner- more often, it is not. (a soul twin is different, and it is supposedly very rare to find them) But it can make things confusing when the resonance is so strong, especially when, let's say for argument's sake, a mystical tie is brought in; impossible things like recognizing a face from dreams, like a premonition from someone who stops a man in a field and tells him about his future. Things get sticky sometimes; if you let your mind open enough to accept them, there are all sorts of uncomfortable implications that then necessarily fall into place. Things we often do not give ourselves time to think about in the modern world, but here, time has a tendency to stretch to the horizon. I am so very blessed to have you willing to reach out like this- I often learn so much from you! I am truly happy that you aee with one you consider a soul mate. You ask about love; I think I have gotten to a point in my life where realisitically I am not looking to live with a twin soul passion burning all the time- but with someone I can understand on that deep level and look at and say, "hey, you are somewhere I could call home and be happy." I even reached out to one such, recently, despite my fear of doing so. It does confuse matters though when you have a soul passion you do not know what to do with, in your life every day. Worship? No- I see this individual's faults clearly, we argue, we disagree, we disappoint each other. Admire, yes. Love? I think respect is the better word. A soul friend is every bit as illuminating as a lover, perhaps more so, I think?

[Emily B]

i had my own moon once, he still shines somewhere, but i haven't seen his light for the longest time, reading your words breaks my heart for you, and for me

and suddnely, I'm thinking of Robert Frost's O Star, and the poets frustration that the star never gave the answer it was asked for, i'm just rambling now, but these are words that i will come back to

[Marie Anzalone]

Thanks, Emily. I have not read that particular Frost poem, think I will need to check it out now. You are always welcome to ramble away on my page, any time- that is exactly what these commets are for. I even had a poet create a new poem in one a few days ago.

You never know what is possible until it happens.

I hope your own moon is ok, and waxes back into your life. I am understanding just how much draw they have on the 90% of us that is pure water.